We are pleased to announce the 7th International Symposium on Contemporary Labor Economics. Large, real-time and rapidly-expanding data sets such as customer transactions at on-line retailers, Google search patterns, and social network activity are becoming increasingly available to social science researchers, and present both new opportunities and challenges for analysis. One new form of `big’ data of particular interest to labor economists is activity on internet job boards, which has the potential to yield important new insights on the mechanics of search and matching in those markets.

The goal of this year’s conference is to bring together leading economic theorists working on search and matching models with empirical researchers who have been using job board data sets, and with representatives of the job board industry to explore what can be learned about labor markets from job board data.

Furthermore, we will have a special session dedicated to data issue, where representatives from IAB of Germany, CHARLS team of Beijing University, survey team of Southwest University of Finance and Economics and Tsinghua University will introduce the production, potential and accessibility of their data.

In addition to papers on search and matching models and papers based on job board data, the organizers also welcome papers on migration and urban labor markets, labor market institutions (i.e. minimum wages and union), and impacts of trade liberalization on the labor market.

Xiamen is located in Southeast China and has convenient direct flights to many major cities in Asia. It is famous for its resort like atmosphere and has a reputation of “Garden over Sea.” Interesting places near Xiamen include the UNESCO World Heritage Hakka Earth Buildings, Gulangyu (Piano Island) and Wuyi Mountain.

Established in 2005, the Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE) is a recent effort of the Ministry of Education of China and Xiamen University to build a first class research institute and facilitate domestic and international research and academic exchanges. Labor economics is one of the priority fields in the development strategy of WISE. For more information about WISE, please visit http://www.wise.xmu.edu.cn.

Submission should be made through our website before October 1st, 2013 (full paper is preferred).

There is an onsite registration fee of $180 for participants outside mainland China and and 600RMB for those from mainland China. The registration fee will cover up to 3 nights of hotel room, meals during the conference. The original planned local tour on Monday, December 9 has to be cancelled given the recent change in related regulations. For all student presenter (one presenter each paper), the registration fees will be waived.

The working language of the conference will be English, with a few parallel Chinese sections.